What are people’s views on being able to have a default UI setting that turned off hand-holding features that direct you to quests and quest objectives etc?
Personally it always hits me when reliving past expansions, in the case classic how much more immersive the world was due to the lack of guidance it had for players, a few breadcrumb quests with a RP objective text for players to understand where thye are going and why, alongside an absolute ton of things that were simply in the world to be stumbled across.
Farstrider’s Lodge (vanilla) in Loch Modan is a decent example of something like this, where nothing ever directs your attention to the area and the only reason you would go is to investigate that section of the map you haven’t yet discovered.
Discovering it however finds you in the unusual location of a high elven lodge in a dwarven valley, with a couple of quite interesting quests. Namely a cocky hunter who asks you to prove yourself to them with a time sensitive hunt quest, who then decides their challenge wasn’t hard enough if you managed to complete it and gives you a new one with less time.
After finishing both of those one of the other npcs gives you a quest instead to take down a foe even the hunter couldn’t take down and thus putting them in their place.
It’s such nice flavour that is missing from the current game and something incredibly easily overlooked when playing the game, but to me that makes it fun and interesting.
Do you think there should be an option where you aren’t told who and what and where you need to do things? One that doesn’t flag the world map with icons saying “side quest available here”. One that encourages you to step into buildings you wouldn’t normally go into just to see what is in there and if there is something of interest.
Personally I’d love the option, I don’t think it fixes these things that are missing from world building, but I believe it certainly would allow for improved engagement with what is generally considered the more mundane of game aspects.
While the idea is a nice one, I’m not sure who would benefit from it. An experienced player would know the game world pretty thoroughly. A new player might well end up so confused they would just turn it off.
Me personally, I’d like follow up quests to be completed without having to go back to the original questgiver. I remember there are a couple of those in STV for Hemet where you finish one and the next one pops up for you. But it didn’t continue to do that so you were constantly going back and forth to complete the quest series.
I didn’t find Classic’s quests very immersive, personally - more annoying. I’m probably just old and lazy.
Vanilla questing, up until the revamp in Cata was a huge mess with not well defined objectives. Was annoying to complete quests before. I really enjoy what we have today.
It still shows things like actual map location and stuff though if I recall correctly, the only thing it removes is the arrow added in SL.
It’s less the quests themselves which were obviously well less developed, but more the encouragement to explore and discover.
Even just from slight things like not being shown where you need to be and what you need to kill.
Personally that makes the game feel less like a game and more like a world that you are simply inhabiting (which in my opinion should be the aim of a MMO)
I think that’s the point though, it was significantly less linear.
It wasn’t all perfect for sure, but having to engage with the game always seems to be a positive to me (since that is the whole point of playing a game)
So vanilla was more “immersive” because you looked all the unclear quests online and found out what you actually needed to do, which you would never have guessed from the quest text?
And then you patted yourself on the head for being so clever as to figure it out for yourself - by going to the right website where somebody had posted the solution.
I think it should be an option to turn those off if you wish. Options like that are good atfer all.
With that said, i personally don’t normally view the quest direction and objectives list as immersion breaking since it’s something i come to accept with any game.
Well, he means the quest markers on the minimap and the quest objectives list. That only turns off the 3D marker in the world.
I was on Wowhead most of the time to figure out what to do: going to 3rd party websites to understand what to do is not good.
Yes, questing is more linear today due to story telling and shardings (world and hub progression based on character progression). But WQ’s are not linear and are hand picked by players.
I think this would be cool as a concept. Open world, do what you like.
I think they have nailed this concept nicely tbh. You could do say Burning Crusade to 50 and then assuming you have one character having done the story, threads of fate is exactly like that. You choose where to go and what to do.
I agree that some quests are a bit difficult to figure out, final part of In Defense of the King’s Land (or something similar) fits in that situation. Although I definitely believe this to be the minority, most have locations, directions, landmarks etc referenced to follow.
I also agree a lot of people take that option of assistance which is fine, but for some people we prefer to be able to read it and have that small thought process or explore. It makes the game feel less scripted
I agree, although I don’t agree in a sense, simply as a different opinion of what being linear is.
I deem being told “x object is here” as being linear, or “kill these mobs not these mobs” in the same way.
It streamlines the process so you have a direct path of action to complete said quest.
The unfortunate truth of today is many people fail to understand anything outside of their own experience.
If something was like that for them then it must have been like that for everyone, and anyone saying otherwise is lying.
